Latvia Golden Visa 2026 — Requirements, Cost & Process (€65,000)

Latvia Golden Visa at a glance

What is the Latvia Golden Visa?

"Latvia Golden Visa" (also written Latvian Golden Visa, Latvia residence by investment or Latvia investor visa) is not an official term. It is the everyday name for a specific provision of Latvian law: a temporary residence permit granted to a foreign investor who contributes to the share capital of an operating Latvian company and pays a contribution to the state budget. The provision has existed since 2010, was significantly reformed in 2014, and from 15 September 2026 is set out in Article 27(1)(10) of the new Immigration Law, replacing Article 23 of the 2002 law.

Latvia is a member of the European Union, the eurozone and the Schengen Area. The permit it issues is a standard EU-format residence card. With it, the holder and family may:

• Live, work and study in Latvia — employment, self-employment or as a company director; schooling at any level. There is no obligation to actually move.
• Travel across the 29 Schengen countries (25 EU member states plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, without visa applications.
• Apply for short-stay visas to the UK and Ireland from Latvia rather than through home-country embassy queues.
• Keep their home, business and tax residency in their own country — the permit creates no obligation to move.

What it is not: it is not permanent residence, not citizenship, not an EU-wide work permit, and not a recoverable investment. Each of those points is covered honestly below, because they are exactly the points where other providers tend to blur the picture.

How much does the Latvia Golden Visa cost in 2026?

From €65,000 all-in for an entire family. Latvia Residence publishes every line item and does not charge a separate service fee on top of the figures below. Your specific total is quoted in writing before you pay anything.

Costs outside the table that you should budget for: translation and apostille of personal documents (roughly €200–€500), flights to Riga for card collection (variable), and private health insurance while on the permit — Latvian regulation for 2026 requires a minimum of €30,000 coverage valid EU-wide, typically €300–€500 per family member per year. Complex source-of-funds reviews or families larger than four can cost more. No assistance fee is charged for renewals during the first five years.

What are the requirements for the Latvia Golden Visa?

The statutory requirements fall on two parties: the Latvian company you invest in, and you as the investor.

Requirements the company must meet (Article 27(1)(10))

• An operating Latvian limited-liability company (SIA) with no more than 50 employees.
• Annual turnover of no more than €10 million, or a balance-sheet total of no more than €10 million.
• An annual tax obligation to the Latvian state and municipal budgets during the permit's validity (the company's responsibility, not the investor's).
• No more than 10 investor permits held in connection with the company.

SIA "Las Palmas" (Reg. No. 42103079906, registered 9 May 2017, about 20 employees, Liepāja) satisfies these criteria; the partner law firm has confirmed in writing that the company qualifies under current law.

Requirements you must meet as the investor

• Non-EU nationality, and not a Russian or Belarusian national (excluded by Article 27(7)–(8)).
• €50,000 contributed to the company's share capital, with your name entered in the Latvian Company Register as a shareholder, plus the €10,000 state budget payment.
• Lawful, documentable source of funds. This is the decisive requirement in practice. Your bank statements and supporting documents (business sale papers, salary history, inheritance documents and so on) are reviewed by the Latvian State Security Service and the Financial Intelligence Unit as well as OCMA. Latvia Residence has the sworn advocate review this file before you pay anything; roughly one in ten families is turned away at this stage.
• Clean record: an apostilled criminal-record certificate from your country of residence, filed on paper.
• Civil documents for the family: passports; apostilled marriage certificate for the spouse; apostilled birth certificates for children under 18.
• Private health insurance for the period on the permit (minimum €30,000 coverage, EU-wide, per 2026 Latvian regulation).

There is no language test, no business-plan requirement, no job-creation requirement and no minimum stay to obtain or renew the temporary permit. Those conditions exist only on the separate permanent-residence route described below.

Who can apply for the Latvia Golden Visa?

Any non-EU national who can meet the requirements above, with two legal exclusions and a few practical ones:

• Excluded by law: Russian and Belarusian nationals (Article 27(7)–(8)). Under Article 28 the Cabinet of Ministers may also suspend the route for nationals of other specified countries for up to five years; as of October 2026 no such regulation has been issued.
• Not eligible by definition: Latvian and other EU citizens.
• Not served by Latvia Residence: nationals of countries whose sanctions exposure prevents a €50,000 outbound bank transfer (including Yemen); Iranian-resident applicants. Iranian nationals who hold documented foreign (typically GCC) residency can be considered.

In practice Latvia Residence's clients come mainly from Egypt, the GCC states (expatriate residents of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman), India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, the Levant, North Africa and Brazil. OCMA's own statistics for 2025 show Turkey (~20%), Vietnam (~11%), the United Kingdom (~9%) and India (~9%) as the leading source nationalities for Latvian investor permits. Eligibility is individual and turns on the source-of-funds file, so the practical way to establish it is a free 30-minute call rather than a website checklist. Country-specific guides are listed below.

How long does the Latvia Golden Visa take?

Realistically 2.5 to 4 months from first call to residence cards in hand. Straightforward cases complete in 10–12 weeks. The statutory OCMA decision windows are much shorter — 30 days standard, 10 business days accelerated, 5 business days urgent — but document preparation, source-of-funds review, embassy and diplomatic-mail transit, and multi-agency security screening account for the difference. The embassy-filing-to-decision stage alone typically runs 2 to 2.5 months.

Filing directly at OCMA in Riga avoids the embassy step and diplomatic-mail transit (2–3 days in Riga). Where the embassy route is used, the embassy can on request forward the file by DHL rather than diplomatic mail, saving about a week.

What changed under Latvia's new Immigration Law in 2026?

On 15 September 2026 a new Immigration Law replaced the law in force since 2002. The €50,000 investor route survived intact in price, but several rules changed. Full analysis of the 2026 law →

For families who do not intend to live in Latvia, the abolition of annual registration is the most welcome change: between two-year renewals there is no obligation to be in Latvia at all. The renewal application can be filed electronically by counsel via latvija.lv; only the biometric step in Riga remains in person. Latvia Residence charges no assistance fee for renewals in the first five years. If you hold a permit issued under the old law, the transitional position is confirmed individually.

Does the Latvia Golden Visa lead to permanent residence or citizenship?

Not automatically — and any provider who tells you otherwise is misleading you. The investor permit is a temporary residence permit. Permanent residence in Latvia / EU long-term resident status (Article 31 of the Immigration Law; Directive 2003/109/EC) is a separate route with its own conditions:

• Five years of genuinely continuous residence in Latvia — absences of no more than 6 consecutive or 10 cumulative months.
• Latvian language at A2 level.
• Sufficient means of subsistence and a Latvian history and culture course.

An investor who visits Latvia for a few days a year does not accrue permanent residence. Latvian citizenship by naturalisation is a further separate path from year 10 of residence (which presupposes permanent residence) with Latvian B1 and history and constitution tests. Most investor families never pursue either: they simply keep renewing the two-year permit, which needs no language test and no relocation. Families who do relocate and qualify for EU long-term resident status gain cross-border rights in most EU member states, including EU-resident university tuition for their children — see the family benefits guide.

Can I live or work in other EU countries with a Latvian residence permit?

No. A Latvian temporary residence permit gives you the right to live and work in Latvia and to travel in the rest of the Schengen Area for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. It does not by itself give the right to settle, take a job or enrol as a resident student in Germany, France, the Netherlands or any other EU state. Those rights come only with the separate EU long-term resident status after five years of actual residence in Latvia, and even then under the receiving country's conditions. If your real goal is to move to another EU country, this permit is not a shortcut to it.

What you can do from day one: visit any Schengen country for business or holidays without visa applications, register your own Latvian company and trade across the EU single market, and apply for UK and Irish short-stay visas from Latvia.

Is the Latvia Golden Visa the cheapest golden visa in Europe?

On published programme terms, yes. Latvia's investor residence permit is currently the lowest-cost regulated EU investor-residence programme in operation. Approximate all-in figures for a family of four in 2026, as published in our EU residence permit cost comparison:

Cheapest is not the same as best for everyone. Portugal offers a faster citizenship clock (year 5 against Latvia's year 10) and a recoverable investment; Greece and Portugal offer a lifestyle destination for families who intend to relocate. For a family that wants an EU residence permit as a Plan B without moving, Latvia delivers the same practical outcome at a fraction of the price. See the honest Latvia vs Portugal comparison.

Is the Latvia Golden Visa legitimate?

Yes, and you can verify every part of it yourself.

• The law. The investor route is a statutory provision, Article 27(1)(10) of the Immigration Law, published on Latvia's official legal portal: likumi.lv/ta/id/370622. The route has operated continuously since 2010; roughly 17,000 investor residence permits have been issued through it since inception.
• The authority. Applications are decided by the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA, in Latvian PMLP), with security review by the Latvian State Security Service (VDD) and the Financial Intelligence Unit. OCMA's published statistics show approximately 149 investor permits issued in 2024 and approximately 201 in 2025.
• The company. SIA "Las Palmas" (Reg. No. 42103079906) is a Latvian company registered on 9 May 2017 with about 20 employees at Rietumkrasta iela 2-11, Liepāja — not a shell created for residence-by-investment. Check it in the Latvian commercial register via Lursoft.
• The lawyer. Every application is filed by Mārtiņš Grīnbergs, a sworn advocate of the Latvian Bar since 2008 and former adviser to two Latvian Cabinet Ministers. His listing is public at the Latvian Council of Sworn Advocates (search "Grīnbergs Mārtiņš").
• The founder. Jānis Rupeiks spent 20 years in the Latvian diplomatic service (2002–2022), including Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Latvia in Cairo (2018–2021), where his consular portfolio included deciding on visa and residence-permit applications, and First Secretary at the Embassy in New Delhi (2014–2017).

Legitimate does not mean guaranteed. Each application is decided on its own merits by OCMA; past approvals are not a guarantee of future outcomes.

What are the risks and downsides of the Latvia Golden Visa?

We would rather you hear these from us than discover them later.

• The €50,000 is not an investment you get back. Shares are repurchased for €1 when you leave the programme. Treat the €50,000 as the price of the residence permit. It is only returned in full if OCMA refuses.
• It is a temporary permit. It must be renewed every two years, with a short trip to Riga each time, and it remains valid only while you stay a shareholder and the company meets its statutory obligations. It does not ripen into permanent residence unless you actually live in Latvia for five years and learn Latvian to A2.
• It is Latvia-only for living and working. Schengen gives you travel, not the right to settle elsewhere in the EU.
• Source of funds is scrutinised by three agencies. OCMA, the State Security Service and the Financial Intelligence Unit all look at where the €50,000 came from. Roughly one in ten families cannot document it to the required standard and is turned away before paying — a disappointment, but a cheaper one than a refusal. Why we send one in ten families away →
• Places are capped. A single company may hold no more than 10 investor permits under the 2026 law, so capacity with any given company is finite.
• The law can change. The 2026 law already shortened permit terms from five years to two. Article 28 lets the Cabinet suspend the route for specified nationalities for up to five years (no such regulation has been issued). Permit holders are subject to the law in force at renewal.
• Sunk costs on refusal are small but real. The OCMA fee (€160–€560), translation and apostille costs are not recovered if the application fails.
• Latvia is not Lisbon. If your family wants to relocate to a warm-weather lifestyle destination, Portugal or Greece may be worth their higher price. Latvia suits families who want EU residence and mobility without moving.

How to apply for the Latvia Golden Visa — step by step

1. Week 1Book a free 30-minute call. With founder Jānis Rupeiks, or with Dr. Mohamed Taha Ghobashy for Arabic-speaking clients. No deposit, no contract. We discuss your nationality, family, source of funds and goals and tell you honestly whether the route fits.
2. Weeks 2–4Send your documents for review. Passports, marriage certificate, children's birth certificates and the source-of-funds file (bank statements, business sale documents, salary history, inheritance documents). Sworn advocate Mārtiņš Grīnbergs reviews everything before any money changes hands.
3. Weeks 4–5Sign and subscribe. You sign the shareholder agreement (containing the €1 exit buyback and the statutory return-of-capital terms on refusal) and the engagement letter (payment terms). You wire the €50,000; within 48 hours you are registered as a shareholder of SIA "Las Palmas" in the Latvian Company Register. The €3,000 legal fee is not paid at this stage.
4. Week 5File the application. Mārtiņš files the complete paper application at the Latvian embassy nearest you — Cairo for Egypt and MENA, the Abu Dhabi consular section for GCC residents, New Delhi for India and Pakistan, Berlin or direct Riga filing for others — or you file in person at OCMA in Riga (2–3 days). The OCMA fee is paid now; we recommend accelerated processing for most families.
5. Weeks 5–10Processing. OCMA reviews the file within its statutory window; the State Security Service and the Financial Intelligence Unit screen it. The €10,000 state budget payment is made at the point confirmed in your engagement letter.
6. Weeks 10–12Collect your cards in Riga. After a positive decision the family has 3 months to come to Latvia; one day is usually enough. The €3,000 legal fee is invoiced now. You then renew every two years with a short visit to Riga for biometrics — no assistance fee for renewals in the first five years.

Latvia Golden Visa guides by nationality

Banking, remittance rules, embassy filing routes and document realities differ by country. These guides cover the specifics:

Nationals of other non-EU countries — including the wider Levant, North Africa and Brazil — are welcome to book a call; eligibility is assessed individually on the source-of-funds file.

Latvia Golden Visa — frequently asked questions